240 DEMOCRATIC ART 



latter, it is true, brought certain aspects of the people into 

 prominence. But it did so hysterically, in a spirit of revolt, 

 without clear intelligence of the altered political and social 

 conditions to which serious art must henceforth respond. 



Under these conditions an art for the people, of the people, 

 seems imperatively demanded, unless art, including literature, 

 shall relax its hold upon reality and subside into agreeable 

 trifling. 



Up to the present moment there are but few signs of any 

 vital resurrection of the spirit. Not only in Europe, but in 

 America also, culture continues to be mainly reproductive 

 and imitative. . The conflict of romanticism with classicism 

 liberated taste ; yet artists still handle worn-out themes in 

 the old formal ways, without the earlier grasp upon them, 

 without fervour of conviction, and without power to awake 

 popular enthusiasm. 



Ill 



So far as I am aware, only one living author has approached 

 this problem with a full sense of its present urgency and 

 ultimate preponderance. I allude to Walt Whitman, whose 

 whole life has been employed in attempting to lay foundations 

 for a new national literature. Whatever we may think about 

 Whitman's actual performance, it is impossible to neglect his 

 teaching or his practice, when we entertain the question of 

 Democratic Art. For this reason I propose to examine what 

 he has written directly and indirectly upon the topic. 



A short but pregnant essay, entitled ' Democratic Vistas, 

 contains the pith of Whitman's theoretical opinions. It 

 starts with a declaration of the author's intention to use ' the 

 words America and Democracy ' as ' convertible terms.' 

 1 The United States,' he says, ' are destined to surmount the 

 gorgeous history of Feudalism, or else prove the most tremen- 

 dous failure of time.' Whitman points out that while 

 America advances rapidly to a dominant position in wealth 

 and strength and all material qualities of national greatness, 

 a literature corresponding to that modern Democracy with 

 which she is identified, has not as yet appeared. ' Feudalism, 



